Maxwell Closes London Paper

Reuters

Published: July 25, 1987

LONDON, July 24—
The publisher Robert Maxwell conceded defeat today in a bitter battle for London's newspaper readership and closed The London Daily News just five months after it started up. Mr. Maxwell, who also owns

Mirror Group Newspapers, said the paper had failed to meet the minimum break-even figure. ''It is currently selling less than 100,000 copies, when minimum sales targets were 200,000 by this time,'' Mr. Maxwell said.

His announcement came barely an hour after he was forced to apologize to the newspaper's chief rival, The London Evening Standard, and made to pay undisclosed damages for accusing it of falsifying its circulation figures.

The Evening Standard, owned by Lord Rothermere's Associated Newspapers, sells more than 550,000 copies a day.

The 63-year-old Mr. Maxwell, who was born in Czechoslovakia, owns several British newspapers, a cable television company and smaller printing and publishing concerns in Britain and the United States. His recent $2 billion bid for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. was rejected by the company. The start-up of The London

Daily News, which published four editions a day, was estimated to have cost Mr. Maxwell $40 million.